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As the US faced its lowest levels of reported trust in government, the COVID-19 crisis revealed the essential service that various federal agencies provide as sources of information. This Element explores variations in trust across various levels of government and government agencies based on a nationally-representative survey conducted in March of 2020. First, it examines trust in agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, state health departments, and local health care providers. This includes variation across key characteristics including party identification, age, and race. Second, the Element explores the evolution of trust in health-related organizations throughout 2020 as the pandemic continued. The Element concludes with a discussion of the implications for agency-specific assessments of trust and their importance as we address historically low levels of trust in government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

In a number of important articles and books—most notably Agendas and Instability in American Politics (1993), The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems (2005)—Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones have pioneered a distinctive approach to the study of agenda setting that has shaped research in both the U.S. politics and comparative politics subfields. The Politics of Information: Problem Definition and the Course of Public Policy in America further expands on the theme of the political determinants, and implications, of "the organization and prioritization of information." And so we have invited a number of political scientists from a range of subfields to comment on the book and on the research agenda more generally.

AbstractSuccessful emergency planning and response requires the cooperation of a broad array of partners. The literature on collaboration and social networks provides conflicting predictions about how organizations choose partners. One tradition focuses on the powerful role of similarity (or homophily) as predicting partner choices. A contrasting tradition argues that rational organizations will choose partners both unlike themselves and unlike their other partners to ensure that each collaboration provides access to unique resources. This article starts with the question of how an organization whose primary responsibilities are not focused on emergency management chooses partners when they respond to and prepare for emergencies. Using a survey of school districts in Texas immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the article assesses the priority of partner choice. The results indicate that school districts choose partners largely on the basis of strategic difference, though there is some evidence of homophily.